Among the wealthy men advertising for a life partner, Marvin Roecker seemed like a good catch.

After all, he was on MillionaireMatch.com and his constant wooing – the intimate phone calls, romantic texts and personal online messages – strongly suggested he was serious about the Western New York woman he met online.

And then came the big “ask.”

Roecker, it seems, was in the midst of a $7 million deal to sell dried cocoa beans to Kraft Heinz, but he needed extra cash to pay for the shipping and insurance. Share Tweet

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Among the wealthy men advertising for a life partner, Marvin Roecker seemed like a good catch.

After all, he was on MillionaireMatch.com and his constant wooing – the intimate phone calls, romantic texts and personal online messages – strongly suggested he was serious about the Western New York woman he met online.

And then came the big “ask.”

Roecker, it seems, was in the midst of a $7 million deal to sell dried cocoa beans to Kraft Heinz, but he needed extra cash to pay for the shipping and insurance.

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When he asked his new friend, a highly paid, white-collar professional, for the money, he promised to repay it, plus interest. He also promised her a romantic relationship.

In the end, he reneged on both, and the woman is now out $718,000.

From the criminal complaint against Jason Osei Bonsu.

“People make bad decisions when they’re in vulnerable places,” said Jason Fickett, a supervisory special agent for the FBI in Buffalo.

Turns out the local woman was the victim of a romance scam, a crime that investigators say is on the rise here and across the country.

Nationally, there were 14,546 victims of romance scams, men and women, last year, and they were cheated out of $219 million, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Romance scams reported in 2016
New York StateUnited States58114,546
The Buffalo News » SOURCE:FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
data
×
United States 14546
United States 14546
New York State 581
Romance scams reported in 2016
download csv

More often than not, the victims are women older than 50, often widowed or divorced, and frequently savvy about computers and social media.

On the other end of those texts, phone calls and emails are criminals, many of them in foreign countries, posing as available and wealthy single men and women.
“Mr. Roecker”

In the case of the local woman who lost $718,000, she received a photo of Roecker, a photo that she later learned was someone else, a Realtor in Texas. The Realtor’s name is not Marvin Roecker, and the FBI says there is no evidence he knew about the scheme.

No one is certain who was behind the Roecker persona, but two men, both of them citizens of Ghana, have been charged with taking part in the scam.

Jason Osei Bonsu and Adams Amen were arrested last month while in the United States and recently appeared in a Buffalo courtroom to face federal fraud charges. They also face likely deportation.

Investigators say the local case is a mirror of the romance scams they see across the country.

“A typical part of these schemes is the continuing dialogue between the victim and perpetrator,” said Robert J. Gross, a supervisory special agent for the FBI in Buffalo.

Typically, the scammers use their initial contacts with the victim to build trust and rapport, and the communication is often intimate, even romantic.

“They’re trying to figure out what buttons to push,” Gross said, “and if they’re really good, the victims won’t even know their buttons are being pushed.”
Other victims

The local woman is not the only one who fell victim to Bonsu and Amen, according to court papers. The two men also are accused of cheating a man in South Dakota out of $72,500 as part of a separate romance scam.

The man was apparently told his money would pay for shipping and insurance costs associated with an inheritance, including a large quantity of gold.

Losses from romance scams in 2016
Amounts in millions of dollars
New York StateUnited States7.1219.87.1
The Buffalo News » SOURCE:FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
data
×
United States $219.8 million
United States 219.8
New York State 7.1
Losses from romance scams in 2016
download csv

As part of their scheme here, Amen and Bonsu spent three months communicating with their female victim through cellphone and email accounts established under Marvin Roecker’s name, according to the criminal complaints filed against them.

Prosecutors say that kind of recruitment period is typical.

“It’s just continuous over time,” Allen said of the texts, phone calls and emails criminals use to woo a victim.

In February of last year, the woman still hadn’t met Roecker, but she wired him $65,000, the first of five payments. She made her final wire transfer in April, this time for $465,000 in cash.

Roecker, as part of his deal with the woman, had agreed to fly to the United States to be with her once his cocoa beans were shipped, and he provided an airline itinerary indicating when he would arrive in Buffalo.

Even after that final payment, Roecker made a last-ditch attempt to get even more money out of the victim, investigators say.

He – or they – arranged fake phone calls from “authorities” in Ghana, saying Roecker had been stopped at the airport because he was trying to take gold out of the country without proper documentation, the FBI says in its complaints.

When the caller asked for money to cover the additional costs, the local woman balked.

“At that point, she realized she had been had,” Gross said.
14,000 victims

Investigators suspect others were victimized by the scam and point to the high number of romance schemes – an estimated 80 to 90 percent – that go unreported.

Obviously, one reason is embarrassment. Victims of romance scams tend to lose more money than victims of other cyber-related frauds.

In 2016, the more than 14,000 men and women who fell victim to romance schemes finished 11th in the FBI’s ranking of cyber crime victims across the nation.

But those same victims lost more money than the victims in all but one other kind of cyber crime that the agency tracked.

The other hurdle facing investigators is the fact that many of these predators are based in foreign countries such as Nigeria and Russia, making arrests and prosecutions difficult.

Amen and Bonsu are natives of Ghana, but they were arrested while traveling in the United States. Investigators believe Ghana is a hotbed of romance scammers.

More and more, according to the FBI, predators are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and one aspect of that is their increasing use of social media in identifying potential victims. They look for men and women who post openly about their dreams and life goals, and they often exploit personal information in making their initial contact.

For Fickett, there are lessons to be learned from what other men and women have gone through.

“Social media is the avenue these people use to access their victims,” he said. “Be careful about the information you share and be careful about who you share it with.”

For Allen, the prosecutor handling the Bonsu and Amen cases, there is one obvious red flag that almost always pops up in romance scams.

“If a person you’ve never met asks you for money, it’s probably a good thing to avoid,” he said.

Defense attorneys for Bonsu and Amen said they could not comment at this time.

The 61-year-old, originally from China, thought nothing of it, having regularly received messages from men on Facebook where she promoted her acupuncture business.

A year later, that friend request has cost her nearly $600,000.

“I don’t know how to explain,” she said. “I don’t know the real world, what’s happening. I’ve never experience someone cheat me. Many time I want to end my life. I feel hopeless.”

Ms Chen, who asked not to use her real name, was the victim of a sophisticated tag-team of scammers playing the roles Dr Frank Harrison, an orthopedic surgeon from the US, Michelle Tan, a Malaysian customs officer, and Raja Bin Abudullah from OCBC Malaysia Bank.

In reality, the group were likely internet scammers from Africa.

The photo of Dr Harrison, stethoscope around his neck, is actually a picture of US weight loss expert Dr Garth Davis from the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas, and pops up regularly in fake profiles used by online scammers.

Posting on Facebook earlier this year, Dr Davis warned of fake Instagram accounts using his photo. “This account in the picture is not mine,” he wrote. “I also am not on any dating sites. And I do not need you to send me money. Lots of people stealing pics and making fake accounts.”

Despite part of the eye-watering sum stolen from Ms Chen being paid to the Commonwealth Bank account of a Victorian-based cleaning supplies company, police say they are powerless to help.

“We have no power, even the police have no power to stop them,” Ms Chen said. “The Australian police don’t care, [they say], ‘It’s too hard, too hard.’”

The scam started in early November, two months after Ms Chen was befriended on Facebook by “Dr Harrison”, who had told her he was thinking of moving to Australia to start a business and wanted to meet her in person.
This photo of US weight loss expert Dr Garth Davis has been used by Nigerian scammers for fake social media profiles. “I am not on any dating sites,” he wrote on Facebook. “And I do not need you to send me money.”

This photo of US weight loss expert Dr Garth Davis has been used by Nigerian scammers for fake social media profiles. “I am not on any dating sites,” he wrote on Facebook. “And I do not need you to send me money.”Source:Supplied

“In early November I got a phone call from him,” she said. “He told me, ‘I’m at the airport in KL, I got in trouble.’ I said, ‘What kind of trouble?’ He said, ‘I carried $US1.5 million through customs, they think I’m carrying too much cash. I got big penalty. Please help me.’”

She then received a phone call from a woman calling herself “Michelle Tan”. Convinced by the woman on the other end of the phone that Dr Harrison and his $US1.5 million would be released if Ms Chen paid a “penalty fee” of $3000, she finally gave in.

Starting with that first $3000, the scammers managed to string Ms Chen along for six months, convincing her to make no fewer than 33 payments — $5000 or $10,000 here, $20,000 or $30,000 there — concocting a litany of excuses.

Security fees, stamp duty, demurrage, legal costs, refund fees, GST. Just one more payment, and the $US1.5 million would be released, and all of her money would be repaid.

“I don’t know why I’m so stupid,” she said. “My psychology is I already pay the money to him, the girl tell me once you pay this you will get the money back, customs will release the luggage to him.

“I didn’t wake up, I didn’t realise both of them are group scam. I also scared to tell me husband. Finally I had to tell my husband I made a big mistake.”

By the time she came clean to her husband, she had paid the scammers a total of $571,000 — her entire life savings, plus some of her husband’s superannuation.

Mr Chen, himself originally from Malaysia, blamed his wife’s naivety on her upbringing in Communist China. “The scammers used Facebook information to pick their targets,” the 62-year-old said. “They have a team that play different roles to manipulate the emotions of the victim. It’s just a matter of time [before] they harvest more Australian victims.”

Mr Chen said while Malaysian police managed to track down and arrest one of the mules in the northwestern state of Kedah within days, Australian police seemed powerless.
One of the fake documents the scammers used to fool Ms Chen.

One of the fake documents the scammers used to fool Ms Chen.Source:Supplied

Two of the early payments, one for $10,000 and another for $15,000, were made to the bank account of Laverton North-based cleaning supplies company Statewide Cleaning Cloths Pty Ltd. When contacted by the investigating officer from Victoria Police, the company said it received the payments from Ms Chen as payment from an overseas company.

“This international company informed them that local parties owed them money and were paying off the debt by paying Statewide Cleaning Cloths,” the officer told Mr Chen in an email.

“Statewide Cleaning Cloths has refused to identify the company I have no power to demand it of them … At this stage there is nothing further I can do in relation to this investigation. I am sorry there is nothing further I can do for you.”

Statewide Cleaning Cloths Pty Ltd has been contacted for comment. Two other Australian bank accounts into which Ms Chen deposited cash were owned by individuals in NSW and the ACT.

“I have no jurisdiction to take this forward,” the Victoria Police officer wrote. “I will be compiling a file which will be sent to the relevant police forces. I’m sure the other police forces will contact you if they make progress with your investigation.”

In 2016, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network together received more than 200,000 reports of online scams, with losses totalling nearly $300 million.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics, however, estimates the total amount lost to personal fraud could be closer to $3 billion, as many victims do not report their experiences.

So-called “Nigerian scams”, in which the victim is convinced to pay or transfer money, were the fifth biggest category, with 2255 reports and $15.6 million reported lost last year, according to the ACCC’s most recent scam report.

“Scammers who use social media hide behind the anonymity of seemingly legitimate profiles, contact a large number of people and make what appear to be genuine connections,” the report said.

“Victims contacted via social media will generally receive a friend request or a private message from someone they have never met before.

“The scammer may pretend to be a friend of a friend or express an interest in meeting new people. They attempt to develop a relationship very quickly with the victim and often urge the victim to move to other online platforms, such as Skype, to continue the scam.”

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, on Tuesday arraigned the duo of Ajani Isaac Adedotun, (a.k.a. Clara Williams and Lara Williams) and Adesina Segun Adedeji before Justice A.D. Oladimeji of the Osun State High Court sitting in Ede, on a 50-count charge bordering on conspiracy and obtaining money by false pretence.

The petitioner alleged that the victim, M. Wassink, a Dutch citizen, was defrauded of over €88,000 in an Internet romance scam.

One of the counts reads: “Ajani Isaac Adedotun (a.k.a Clara Williams, Lara Williams) and Adesina Segun Adedeji, on or about the 5th day of March, 2014 at Ile Ife, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, with intent to defraud, obtained the sum of €23,000 through Adesina Segun Adedeji’s Skye Bank account from M. Wassink, under the false pretence that you are a female from Belgium and had travelled to Nigeria to buy some gemstones and bracelets and that the said sum of money represented fees for the officials securing the gemstones for you, which representation you knew to be false.”

The accused persons, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges when they were read to them.

In view of their pleas, the prosecuting counsel, Vera Agboje, asked the court for a trial date and prayed the court to remand the accused in prison custody.

However, counsel to the accused persons, Sanyaolu S. Akinyele and T. S. Adegboyega, respectively prayed the court to grant their clients bail.

Justice Oladimeji adjourned the case to May 16, 2017 for hearing of the bail applications and ordered the accused to be remanded in Ilesa prison custody.

She trusted a man she met online and ended up losing more than $60,000. She is now hoping to help protect others from making the same mistake.

Law enforcement say the internet, along with many dating sites, make a “sweetheart scam” an easy crime. Online a person can pretend to be anybody they want to be.

The woman we will call Alexandria says she met her love online via Match. Another member approached her, saying he was in a relationship, but his boss wanted to meet her based on a profile that he saw.
romance scam 6pkg transfer frame 143 Sweetheart Scam Victim: I Feel So Powerless

“Alexandria” (credit: CBS)

Alexandria does not want to be identified which is why we blurred her picture and changed her name. She says she fell in love over emails and phone calls with a man allegedly named Harry Kane. They talked and emailed for a few months while he was overseas for work. “I saw that he had a house here locally and I thought, wow, that’s too good to be true.”

It was, she says.

The Central Colorado woman says she is ashamed that she was bilked out of $62,000.
romance scam 6pkg transfer frame 557 Sweetheart Scam Victim: I Feel So Powerless

(credit: CBS)

She never even met Kane. After a few months of the computer courtship, her online love told her they would meet once he got back from business in Africa. He claimed to have an elevator installation company. That is when the requests for money began.

“It started out with maybe $500 dollars and then he kept upping the ante,” she says. “Then a crane broke down and he needed me to send money to fix the crane, so he could finish the job, Alexandria explains. She says that phone call was a $17-thousand dollar request. “It kept building up more and more and more,” she adds about the money requests.
romance scam 6pkg transfer frame 1707 Sweetheart Scam Victim: I Feel So Powerless

(credit: CBS)

Alexandria eventually reported Kane to the FBI but she says the agency has not even returned her calls.

In an unprecedented joint operation, Hong Kong, Malaysian and Nigerian police have busted a syndicate running online romance scams which duped nearly 90 women out of HK$60 million, ­local officials said on Friday.

The transnational racket, based in Malaysia, had swindled 73 Hong Kong women out of HK$58 million since 2014, according to Hong Kong police. The gang also cheated 13 Malaysian women out of HK$2 million.

The biggest victim was a middle-aged professional from Hong Kong who was conned out of HK$9.1 million, according to Superintendent Lam Cheuk-ho of the cybersecurity and technology crime bureau.

The woman became acquainted with the swindler through an online dating platform last summer, but nine months passed before she realised she had been duped and sought police help in April. It is understood her money was laundered through more than 10 bank accounts in Malaysia and Nigeria before police lost track of it.

The gang was allegedly headed by a pair of lovers – a Nigerian man, aged 36, and a Malaysian woman, 46. They were among 13 people nabbed in Malaysia last week during the joint operation. Hong Kong police officers went to Kuala Lumpur ahead of a series of raids between December 5 and 8.

[Police have carried out campaigns urging residents to watch out for telephone and online scammers. Photo: David Wong]

“Half of the core members were responsible for using computers to create fake identities, and searching for and contacting victims, while the other half handled crime proceeds and remitted the money out of Hong Kong and other countries,” Lam said.

Describing it as the “biggest and a sophisticated syndicate” that preyed on Hong Kong women, he said the gang also targeted victims in Europe, the United States and Australia.

Scammers typically disguised as “Caucasian” European or American men, claiming to be professionals in fields such as engineering, banking, business or the military, befriended victims online. It would usually take them at least one or two months to win the trust and sympathy of victims.

“Victims were told their so-called lovers would fly to Hong Kong to marry them and send wedding gifts and assets,” Lam said. “But they were then told the gifts and assets had been confiscated by local authorities and victims were asked for help to pay handling and administrative fees or a surety.”

Some victims were told their “lovers” had run into trouble and needed money urgently, among other excuses.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/hong-kong-police-bust-transnational-love-scam-that-duped-women-out-of-hk60m/feed/0alanprinceFacebook romance scam ends in federal prison for two menhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/facebook-romance-scam-ends-in-federal-prison-for-two-men/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/facebook-romance-scam-ends-in-federal-prison-for-two-men/#respondFri, 23 Dec 2016 20:22:21 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=780Two Nigerian citizens were sentenced Thursday to 36 months in federal prison and could face possible deportation for their participation in a $2 million romance scam that started on Facebook.

Kunle Mutiu Amoo, 49, and Lanre Sunday Adeoba, 62, were ordered to pay a little over $86,000 in restitution, after pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to commit wire fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson.

Amoo and Adeoba admitted their involvement in a scam that defrauded victims of money by making false promises or stating romantic overtures that the victims would be repaid.

The defendants pretended to be South African diplomats who needed the victim’s financial assistance to transport money into the United States. The two admitted in their guilty plea that they tried to defraud the victim of $506,000. The victim lost $2 million because of the scam.

Amoo and Adeoba will be in federal custody until they can be moved to a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility at a later date.

U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett, who sentenced Amoo and Adeoba, said the two had abused a position of trust by pretending to be diplomats. He also noted the victim suffered severe financial hardship from their actions.

The woman was drawn into the scam after being drawn into an Internet relationship with a man she never met. The two Nigerian men posed as diplomats who were supposedly working with the man on a South African project, according to court documents.

Compared to other Internet-enabled crimes, romance scams result in the largest amount of financial loss among victims, according to the FBI. Victims of these scams, which are classified as confidence frauds, reported nearly $200 million worth of financial losses in 2015, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/facebook-romance-scam-ends-in-federal-prison-for-two-men/feed/0alanprinceNigerian man arrested for exporting $40million scam to the UShttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/nigerian-man-arrested-for-exporting-40million-scam-to-the-us/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/nigerian-man-arrested-for-exporting-40million-scam-to-the-us/#respondTue, 13 Dec 2016 03:32:48 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=778Lagos – Six U.S. citizens and a Nigerian national were sentenced Tuesday to federal prison for their roles in online fraud schemes that distributed more than $40 million in counterfeit checks using “mystery shopper” websites and work-from-home scams.

The criminal enterprise was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Funso Hassan, 27, of Ibadan, Nigeria and Anthony Shane Jeffers, 44, of Maryville, Tennessee, were each sentenced to 10 years in prison. Ann Louise Franzen, 70, of Kiln, Mississippi; Gary Melvin Barnard, 64, of Palestine, Texas; Michele Gayle Fee, 55, of Stockton, California; Tanya Lynn Thomas, 52, of Turlock, California; and Shawn Ann White, 44, of Manteca, California, were each sentenced to five years in prison.

In addition to the prison sentences, U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola, Jr., of the Southern District of Mississippi sentenced each defendant to three years supervised release following completeion of their sentences. Restitution to the victims for all defendants will be determined at a later date. The sentences are the maximum statutory penalty for the charges to which the defendants pleaded.

All seven defendants were members of a large-scale international financial fraud conspiracy that included romance scams through online dating sites, check fraud, secret shopper schemes and personal assistant work-from-home schemes.

Some of the defendants started as romance scam victims only later becoming knowing participants in the counterfeit check fraud. Victims were sent checks with mystery shopper and personal assistant instructions. The checks, which were counterfeit, would bounce after the victims transmited proceeds to various locations in the United States which were then layered for transmission to Nigeria.

Victims then owed their banks the amount of checks and often hundreds of dollars in bank fees

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/nigerian-man-arrested-for-exporting-40million-scam-to-the-us/feed/0alanprinceOnline fraud: Top Nigerian scammer arrestedhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/online-fraud-top-nigerian-scammer-arrested/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/online-fraud-top-nigerian-scammer-arrested/#commentsTue, 13 Dec 2016 03:27:11 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=776A Nigerian behind thousands of online scams around the world has been arrested in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt, Interpol alleges.

The 40-year-old man, known only as “Mike” is alleged to head a network of 40 individuals behind global scams worth more than $60m (£45m).

His operations involved using malware to take over systems to compromise emails, as well as romance scams.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/online-fraud-top-nigerian-scammer-arrested/feed/1alanprinceBeware of Scammers Lurking Onlinehttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/beware-of-scammers-lurking-online/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/beware-of-scammers-lurking-online/#respondTue, 13 Dec 2016 03:19:04 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=774Alivia Briggs thought she found the perfect dress to wear to the prom last spring and wasted no time ordering it from a website recommended by a friend. But when she received the dress, it barely resembled the pink mermaid gown with detailed silver beading that she had seen in the photos.

“The appliques on it looked kind of like these doilies, maybe the kind that you see on your grandma’s nightstand,” says the 18-year-senior at Austin High School in Decatur, Ala. “They were like these iron on doilies and these little beads like from the craft store. It looked like something I definitely could have made myself.”

Electronics, Headphones and Sneakers

Briggs is among the growing number of teens who have been targeted by online scams involving shopping, dating, scholarships, employment, anti-virus software, tax refunds and identity theft, among other schemes.

Last year teens lost $8.1 million to online scams, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “2015 Internet Crime Report.” Overall, Americans lost $1.07 billion to internet scams, but the FBI estimates that only 15% of cases of internet fraud are ever reported.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/beware-of-scammers-lurking-online/feed/0alanprinceSevierville couple targeted in new version of ‘Nigerian email scamhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/sevierville-couple-targeted-in-new-version-of-nigerian-email-scam/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/sevierville-couple-targeted-in-new-version-of-nigerian-email-scam/#respondTue, 13 Dec 2016 03:13:17 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=772SEVIERVILLE (WATE) – One of the country’s longest running scams is taking on a new twist. The Nigerian letter scam is basically a fund-transfer fraud that’s now reaching people by email and the scammers personalize the letter. If you take the bait, you could lose it all.

Scam letters are nothing new, especially the ones that say a great hero in our country has died and left you a pile of money. The con artist then offers to transfer that ton of cash into your bank account. In this case, the scammer got personal and wrote that the person who died was a relative of the intended victim, who has the same last name.

Vernice and Ted Berry have been trying to determine whether an email they received in late October could be the real thing. It came from a guy calling himself Gerald Manel, a financial manager. He wrote that one of Ted Berry’s relatives recently died.

“My name is Gerald Manel, a portfolio manager to Edward Berry your late relative,” read the email. “After countless attempts to locate any of his relatives, I am glad to have found you.”

The letter says Edward Berry’s unclaimed account is valued at $1.7 million and will be confiscated if not claimed. Vernice Berry says when she saw the amount, she could just picture a Cadillac Escalade in her garage.

Through email, the Berrys filled out an investment certificate and then they received a deposit slip. The scammers must have figured they had them hooked.

“You are required to forward below documents to facilitate the release of $1,750,857 to you as the legal beneficiary,” read another email.

Vernice Berry said she checked t

o see if Financial Reserve Credit Union was the real thing.

“We did investigate. We got on their website and they do really exist,” she said.

All along, they both said they had a funny feeling. Could Edward Berry really be Ted’s relative?

“I don’t know Edward Berry. I may have a lot of lost relatives, but I don’t know if that is one of them,” he said.

The Berrys said they’re weren’t born yesterday and were smart enough not to disclose bank or credit information to this so-called portfolio director Gerald Manel.

“They could probably rip us off for a lot of money. Maybe send us a check that we would cash, then we’d have to send back some to them. That would be a bad check, plus we would be out what we sent to them,” said Vernice Berry.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/sevierville-couple-targeted-in-new-version-of-nigerian-email-scam/feed/0alanprinceConman jailed for love affair scamshttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/conman-jailed-for-love-affair-scams/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/conman-jailed-for-love-affair-scams/#respondSat, 15 Aug 2015 13:44:42 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=770A conman who cheated women out of thousands of pounds after convincing them an American marine had fallen in love with them has been jailed for six years. Robinson Agbonifoayetan posed as a soldier online and defrauded two women out of £42,000. One of his victims, who lives in Ealing, used up her life savings and sold her car before becoming suspicious and alerting the police.http://www.itv.com/news/london/update/2015-08-13/conman-jailed-for-love-affair-scams/
]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/conman-jailed-for-love-affair-scams/feed/0alanprinceManteca trio indicted in Nigerian scamhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/manteca-trio-indicted-in-nigerian-scam/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/manteca-trio-indicted-in-nigerian-scam/#respondSat, 15 Aug 2015 13:35:12 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=768GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi woman first believed to be a victim of a Nigerian scam has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Gulfport along with a Nigerian man and five others.

Court documents show Ann Louise Franzen, of Kiln, was considered a victim in 2012 when authorities learned she had received $3.1 million in counterfeit checks and money orders.

But a 19-count indictment alleges Franzen was part of an Internet-based scheme to defraud others through work-at-home and secret-shopper scams. According to the indictment, the scheme allegedly involved bogus checks, money orders and traveler’s checks and the purchase of “high dollar” items with fraudulent credit card accounts.

Hassan was taken into custody on a criminal complaint June 2 when he flew into the U.S. He is held without bond. Hassan pleaded not guilty Wednesday. His trial date was set on a court calendar that starts Oct. 5.

The indictment alleges Hassan and others sent emails to find their victims, who received bogus checks, deposited them at their banks and sent most of the money to others.

The indictment said Franzen and Jeffers designed and made the bogus checks for distribution throughout the U.S., and Barnard, Thomas and Jeffers mailed fake checks to 11 South Mississippi victims.

Court documents allege customs agents in Los Angeles in 2012 intercepted bogus checks from Malaysia in a package addressed to Bowen Consulting at Franzen’s home address. The same year, she allegedly received bogus checks from Nigeria in a package labeled “local soap and sponge herbs.”

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/08/15/manteca-trio-indicted-in-nigerian-scam/feed/0alanprinceEFCC nabs 2 MAPOLY students for duping American of N0.89m in ‘Motherless Babies Home’ scamhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-nabs-2-mapoly-students-for-duping-american-of-n0-89m-in-motherless-babies-home-scam/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-nabs-2-mapoly-students-for-duping-american-of-n0-89m-in-motherless-babies-home-scam/#respondThu, 30 Jul 2015 16:47:57 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=765Ojosipe Adedayo, a 17-year-old a student and his 24-year old accomplice, Owolabi Ahmed, both MAPOLY students, have been arraigned by the EFCC for defrauding an American of a total of about N895,725.
Two students of the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic (MAPOLY), Ojere, Abeokuta Ogun State, have been arraigned for jointly defrauding an American of a total of $4000 (approximately N895,725).

Ojosipe Adedayo, a 17-year-old a HND II student and his 24-year old accomplice, Owolabi Ahmed, were dragged before Justice Atinuke Ipaye of an Ikeja High Court by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The prosecutor, Emmanuel Jackson said Adedayo duped one Adam Denborsky, an American citizen, of the sum of $2000 while pretending to be Marty Jason, a 30-year-old from Pennsylvania, USA.

Adedayo, who met his victim on Facebook, allegedly confessed to have received the money through Western Union and used the money to buy clothes and a phone.

Co-defendant Ahmed, an HND II Electrical and Electronics student of same institution, was arraigned on three count charge of fraud for allegedly posing as an orphaned single girl, Candice Skye, from the United States.

Ahmed reportedly pretended to be a gemstone dealer in need of $2500 to facilitate the clearing of her goods with the Customs.

The duo were arraigned on charges of fraud and obtaining under false pretences, offences which the prosecutor is contrary to Section 6,8(b) and 1(3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act NO 14 of 2006.

“Ojosipe a.k.a Marty Jason and Candice, on or about May 8, 2014 in Lagos had in your possession a document in which you represented yourself to be a single lady called Candice from Trenton, New Jersey, United States, who helps the needy to organise charity concerts and also help the homeless to get funds for Motherless Babies Home, which representations you knew to be false,” part of the charge read.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-nabs-2-mapoly-students-for-duping-american-of-n0-89m-in-motherless-babies-home-scam/feed/0alanprinceEFCC docks father, son over Internet fraudhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-docks-father-son-over-internet-fraud/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-docks-father-son-over-internet-fraud/#respondThu, 30 Jul 2015 16:45:10 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=763A father and son who runs an Internet scam syndicate have been dragged to the court by EFCC.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), has dragged a jobless man, Justice Unuafe, and his son, Omorigho Unuafe, before the Federal High Court, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, for perpetrating an Internet Fraud and obtaining money by false pretense.

The father and son scam syndicate was charged on a four-count charge bordering on obstruction, possession of fraudulent documents and obtaining money by false pretence. The EFCC stated in its brief that it had seized two cars and an uncompleted storey building from the Unuafes, having acquired the property and cars from the proceeds of their crimes.

The men were also said to have obtained $4,256 in Port Harcourt from one Cheng Chung Shin, while posing as one Maro Moton. The father and son were arraigned on March 24

The Head, Media and Publicity of the anti-graft agency, Wilson Uwujaren, said the men were arrested based on intelligence gathered while investigating a reported case of Internet scam.

“Both of them, who are jobless, were found in possession of Honda Accord 2004 model and an Acura ZDX, without document to prove how they got the vehicles.

They also have an almost completed storey building located in Delta State. The accused refused to give the EFCC operatives the required information needed from them for the investigation.”

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-docks-father-son-over-internet-fraud/feed/0alanprinceEFCC returns money to French Victim of internet love scamhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-returns-money-to-french-victim-of-internet-love-scam/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/30/efcc-returns-money-to-french-victim-of-internet-love-scam/#respondThu, 30 Jul 2015 16:43:19 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=761Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has recovered and returned 10,000 Euros about to F. Mercade, a French citizen, who was victim of internet love scam.

The fund was wired to the victim through his account in France on the recommendation of the French Embassy in Nigeria.

Roger Balima, French Police Liaison Officer who confirmed the receipt of the funds by the victim, thanked the EFCC “for the good job.”

Mercade was duped by two internet fraudsters, Omodara Adedapo Oluseye and Adesuyi Ayodeji Adedapo after he was deceived into a phantom relationship that was supposedly alter-bound.

The scam was reported to the Commission via a petition from the French Consulate in Lagos, on behalf of Mercade. The petitioner alleged that he met a Nigerian beauty by name, ‘Kate Williams’ on the internet sometime in 2009 and they developed a relationship which was to culminate in marriage. ‘Williams’ was to relocate to join Mercade in France, to consummate the relationship.

While Mercade planned the logistics of the relocation, ‘Williams’ who purportedly did some jobs for an unnamed company in Nigeria, came up with a story that the company refused to pay ‘her’ for job done. ‘She’ sought the assistance of Mercade and the ‘couple’ contacted a lawyer named ‘James Robert’, to procure traveling documents and also help her claim money from the company owing her.

Mercade parted with the sum of 25,000.00 Euros, through Western Union, in processing his brides’ passage with no bride in sight. Eventually, it dawned on him that he had been scammed.

Investigations into the matter by the Commission revealed that ‘Kate Williams’ is the pseudonym of Omodara Adedapo Oluseye, a male student of the College of Agriculture, Akure, who, however, resides in Ibadan Oyo state. Omodara’s accomplice, Adesuyi Ayodeji Adedapo, assisted in collecting the money transferred by the victim from the Akure, Ondo State branch of a new generation bank, using forged drivers’ license.

The duo were prosecuted on a two count charge of conspiracy and obtaining money by false pretences before a Federal High Court Lagos, convicted and sentenced on 13th June 2011, to one year imprisonment each without an option of fine.

Have you gotten an online dating message recently from Adeline Piper? How about Dickson Jones or Marlon Chase? The person on the other end may be a Nigerian scammer, the U.S. government said on Monday.

In a case that could spread to other states, six Nigerian nationals have been extradited to Mississippi to face charges that they helped run a nearly 15-year-long series of Internet scams. The rip-offs preyed upon Americans using online dating and work-at-home websites, among others.

In a nine-count federal indictment, the U.S. Justice Department said that since 2001, the group has committed several crimes, including mail fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and identity theft. The case includes “romance-reshipping scams, fraudulent check scams, work-at-home scams and account take-overs.”

In one case from 2013, the defendants drained $34,950 from a brokerage account belonging to two of the victims and dropped the money into a bank account. Then they began withdrawing it with MoneyGrams and prepaid VISA cards, a few hundred dollars at a time, over the next several months.

In another case from 2011, the indictment said, the con artists opened a fraudulent AT&T wireless telephone account using the name of one victim, then bought two BlackBerry Torch smartphones with a credit card stolen from a second victim; then they shipped the phones to a third victim, with instructions on how to ship the devices to South Africa.

In many of the cases, the indictment said, victims believed they were shipping the items abroad for charitable purposes.

Officials said the six Nigerian nationals were extradited from South Africa, where they operated, to Gulfport, Miss., to face federal charges there. The Justice Department said the victims lived in Mississippi and were enticed to give up personal and financial data, in some cases, through fictitious online romantic relationships.

The suspects used, among other tools, the dating site Seniorpeoplemeet.com, the indictment said. The site calls itself a “community specially designed to cater to senior singles seeking mature dating.” It advertises that users can “meet senior singles in under 2 minutes.” Officials with the site didn’t immediately respond to an interview request.

Federal prosecutors have already won convictions for three others in the case; a half dozen are awaiting trial, while authorities are still trying to extradite three more suspects from Nigeria. Three more alleged scammers remain fugitives, the government said.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing and could expand to include charges in other states.

Janet N. Cook, a church secretary in the Tidewater, Va., area, had been a widow for a decade when she joined an Internet dating site and was quickly overcome by a rush of emails, phone calls and plans for a face-to-face visit.

“I’m not stupid, but I was totally naïve,” said Ms. Cook, now 76, who was swept off her feet starting in July 2011 by attention from a man who called himself Kelvin Wells and described himself as a middle-aged German businessman looking for someone “confident” and “outspoken” to travel with him to places like Italy, his “dream destination.”
Continue reading the main story
Related Coverage

It took David Burdette months to change various account numbers and reset passwords after criminals apparently cracked a password he used.
Your Money: Online Map Tracks Frauds Against Older AmericansMARCH 7, 2014
Bradly D. Swartz, of Meshoppen, Pa., said his credit was ruined by telemarketers who emptied his checking account.
A Vulnerable Age: Fraud Against Seniors Often Is Routed Through BanksJUNE 10, 2013

But very soon he began describing various troubles, including being hospitalized in Ghana, where he had gone on business, and asking Ms. Cook to bail him out — again and again. In all, she sent him nearly $300,000, as he apparently followed a well-honed script that online criminals use to bilk members of dating sites out of tens of millions of dollars a year.
Continue reading the main story
Warning Signs

Be cautious of people who claim that the romance is destiny or fate and that you are meant to be together.
Beware if a person tells you they love you and cannot live without you, but they need you to send them money so they can visit you. And if you do not send them money or help them, they will claim you do not love them.
Swindlers typically claim they are originally from the United States (or your region) but now are overseas, or are going overseas, attending to business or family matters.

Many of those targeted are women, especially women in their 50s and 60s, often retired and living alone, who say that the email and phone wooing forms a bond that may not be physical but that is intense and enveloping. How many people are snared by Internet romance fraud is unclear, but between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2014, nearly 6,000 people registered complaints of such confidence fraud with losses of $82.3 million, according to the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Older people are ideal targets because they often have accumulated savings over a lifetime, own their homes and are susceptible to being deceived by someone intent on fraud. Most victims say they are embarrassed to admit what happened, and they fear that revealing it will bring derision from their family and friends, who will question their judgment and even their ability to handle their own financial affairs.

“That would ruin my reputation in my community,” said a woman from Pensacola, Fla., who spoke on condition of anonymity. She lost $292,000, she said, to a man she met online in late 2013, but she has kept it secret from her family and friends.

At first, Louise B. Brown, 68, a nurse in a pediatrician’s office in Burlington, Vt., also hid the fact she had been defrauded online. She said she had tried several dating sites, including eHarmony.com, because, “After my husband died, I had no spouse to talk to.”

Then in 2012, on Match.com, she met a man who called himself Thomas. He said he was a road contractor in Maine and was about to leave for a business venture in Malaysia.

“At first it made sense, but then he started asking me for money to cover expenses like work permits,” she said. “Eventually, I sent $60,000.” After she ran through her savings, her suitor urged her to accept illegally obtained money from his friends, then forward the money to him, she testified before Vermont lawmakers this year at a hearing on Internet dating fraud. It was not until her credit union alerted her that she learned that “Thomas” was a swindler.

As a result of investigations into more than two dozen complaints by victims in the state, Vermont’s Legislature is poised to pass a law requiring online dating sites to notify members quickly when there is suspicious activity on their accounts or when another member has been barred on suspicion of financial fraud.

Victims typically lose $40,000 to $100,000, said Wendy Morgan, chief of the Public Protection Division of the Vermont Attorney General’s Office. The highest reported loss in the state was $213,000.

Swindlers can gain access to the lovelorn by hacking into a dormant dating profile and altering such information as age, gender and occupation, according to Vermont investigators. After contacting a possible victim, the swindler tries to avoid detection on the dating site by insisting that communications shift to email, telephone or instant message.

Typically, the Internet swindler says he speaks English because he has lived in Europe or the United States and is working as a contractor or builder in Malaysia or another country where he encounters trouble with local authorities. The website romancescams.org lists red flags to look for to identify such predators, who urgently appeal to victims for money to cover financial setbacks like unexpected fines, money lost to robbery or unpaid wages.

That is how Betty L. Davies, 62, of Conyers, Ga., lost a huge sum to a man who called himself Donald Leo Moore and claimed to be a chemical engineer working on a pipe refinery in Malaysia. Three weeks into a relationship that began in 2013, he told Ms. Davies that he had been robbed by a man on a bicycle and asked her to send him money.

“I debated for a long time, but I wanted to help him,” she said. “Then his project had a problem, and he needed $20,000, and then immigration officials in Singapore stopped him on his way to visit me for Christmas, and he needed $30,000.”

“He even sent me his flight itinerary to Atlanta for Christmas. I had bought him a sweater, but Christmas came and went,” she said. Later, he threatened her with not returning any of her money if she did not send more.

Her reaction to losing almost $300,000 to the swindler: “I blame myself. I felt like jumping off a cliff.”

Law enforcement authorities say the swindlers follow a similar pattern.

“They get the victim to trust them, then create a sense or urgency and prey on the trust they’ve created,” said David Farquhar of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s financial crimes section. “These are threads in all confidence schemes,” said Mr. Farquhar, who is the section’s chief of the intellectual property and cyberenabled crimes.

Victims who are looking for romance but find online criminals instead should alert authorities, he said.

“It’s imperative for someone who thinks they have been scammed to move quickly and notify the bank and law enforcement authorities,” he said. Even so, he admitted, “The chances are not great of seeing that money again.”

While some swindlers are local, others are part of international crime rings and are more difficult to track, although, Mr. Farquhar said, the F.B.I. has personnel in a number of countries, including Nigeria and Ghana, where Internet romance swindlers operate.

Despite warnings, the digital version of the romance con is now sufficiently widespread that AARP’s Fraud Watch Network in June urged online dating sites to institute more safeguards to protect against such fraud. The safeguards it suggests include using computer algorithms to detect suspicious language patterns, searching for fake profiles, alerting members who have been in contact with someone using a fake profile and providing more education so members are aware of romance cons.

Lagos – Nigeria’s anti-graft agency said on Thursday it had returned €10 000 to a French man who thought he had met a beautiful Nigerian woman online willing to move to France… only to find out it was a scam.

The man, identified as Francois Mercade, “alleged that he met a Nigerian beauty by the name ‘Kate Williams’ on the internet sometime in 2009 and they developed a relationship which was to culminate in marriage”, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) said.

“‘Williams’ was to relocate to join Mercade in France, to consummate the relationship.

“‘Williams’, who purportedly did some jobs for an unnamed company in Nigeria, came up with a story that the company refused to pay ‘her’ for the job done.”

The supposed wife-to-be told him that before she could relocate to France, she needed money to hire a lawyer to deal with her employer and to get travel documents, the EFCC said.

Eventually, Mercade wired €25 000 over to enable his beloved to join him, but soon realised he had been conned.

“Kate Williams” was none other than Omodara Adedapo Oluseye, a male student at a college of agriculture in southwestern Nigeria, the EFCC said.

He had an accomplice, and both have since been arrested and jailed for one year.

The EFCC, however, only recovered part of the money Mercade was deceived into paying and wired the €10 000 to the victim.

Internet love scams targeting gullible suitors in rich countries are common, and a large number of these have originated in Nigeria.

An Australian woman has told a heart rending story about how she lost her life savings of $350,000 to Nigerian scammers who hooked her via a dating site.

Jan Marshall thought she’d finally found love, but not only has she had her heart broken, her life savings of $350,000 have been ripped away.

The Melbourne woman is just another victim of the online dating scams which have cost Australians almost $30million in the past year alone, the Mail Online reported today.

Ms Marshall, 61, signed up to dating website Plenty of Fish in the hope of finding love after moving to Melbourne from Brisbane in 2012, and matched with one ‘Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn’.

According to his dating profile, Mr Dubhlainn was from Manchester, England, but working in the United States as a civil engineer.

Within a matter of months, she had accepted his marriage proposal, arranged to meet him and started sending money to his bank account.

Little did she know that Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn didn’t exist, and his profile was invented and managed by a group of fraudsters in Nigeria that specifically targeted Ms Marshall.

‘We continued to communicate and very quickly he got me on email and phone and then instant messenger.’

‘Within a month it got very serious and he asked me to marry him, and I accepted, I was fully drawn into his love and attention.’

But for those closest to Jan, the alarm bells were ringing.
‘Several friends tried to warn me, when you were in these things they cut you off from your friends, encourage you to disassociate with them,’ she admitted.
‘They (the scammers) tell you that no one understands what we have, afterwards I had to go back to family and friends – your initial reaction is of shock shame and embarrassment.’
But the tactics were as effective as they were exhausting.
‘They talk to you morning, noon and night, they are professional and manipulative fraudsters, that’s the truth of the matter, just calling them “scammers” trivialises what they do,’ she added.

‘He’d returned to England and then supposedly took a short-term contract in Dubai and promised he’d come onto Australia six to eight weeks after that,’ Ms Marshall said.

‘Once he said he was in Dubai, the money requests started, initially he said he had to pay some taxes he hadn’t allowed for.

‘It all happened over six weeks, and I only paid out to him expecting to get it back.
fake Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn

fake Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn

‘And then it was money for business materials, and it got worse, he supposedly got robbed on the way to pay those taxes,’ she added.

More excuses and elaborate stories began to build, as did Jan Marshall’s expenses.
‘It was always amounts like $40,000, which I gave to him twice, then he said he was in trouble with those he’d contracted work to and had to buy out the contract for $77,000,’ she said.

‘The larger amounts went to bank accounts, those of $40,000 and $30,000 went through Western Union, even thought there is a limit of $10,000 and I was doing it in multiples of 10.

‘Then, when he was apparently on his way to the airport (to come to Australia) he had a car crash and was in hospital, they had other people like nurses and doctors contact you, a document showing the expenses and others playing other roles,’ she said.
‘I didn’t realise it was a scam until he got on a plane to England, he said “I’m on my way now, thanks for everything”, it wasn’t until then that I realised.

For Jan Marshall, the heartbreak and financial ruin caused by the online scam won’t end any time soon.

Now Ms Marshall is fighting the Australian Taxation Office, which is pursuing her for $76,000 after she accessed her superannuation for the ‘man’.

Victoria Police investigated, passing on details to Western Union ‘so the names used could be stopped, as only they can do this’.

‘The only follow up I received is that the money was collected in Nigeria, though I had sent it to Dubai,’ Ms Marshall said.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/07/08/how-nigerian-scammers-ruined-an-australian-woman/feed/0alanprinceNigerian facing fraud charges in scam against womanhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/nigerian-facing-fraud-charges-in-scam-against-woman/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/nigerian-facing-fraud-charges-in-scam-against-woman/#respondMon, 20 Apr 2015 13:05:38 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=746GULFPORT, Miss. —A Nigerian man living in Canada has been extradited to Mississippi to face charges alleging he was part of an international cybercrime ring.

Prosecutors accuse Adekunle Adefila of using romance scams, work-at-home schemes and other means to commit financial crimes said to represent millions of dollars in losses.

The Sun Herald reported that Adefila is being held for a detention hearing Monday. Court records show prosecutors want him held with no bond.

Adefila pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges of money laundering, attempt and conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to commit offenses against the U.S.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/nigerian-facing-fraud-charges-in-scam-against-woman/feed/0alanprinceLove Scam: American victim lauds EFCC •Agency recovers $23,886 for victim EFCC arrests another fraudsters for N806m scamhttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/love-scam-american-victim-lauds-efcc-%e2%80%a2agency-recovers-23886-for-victim-efcc-arrests-another-fraudsters-for-n806m-scam/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/love-scam-american-victim-lauds-efcc-%e2%80%a2agency-recovers-23886-for-victim-efcc-arrests-another-fraudsters-for-n806m-scam/#commentsThu, 19 Feb 2015 11:08:40 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=744The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC has been commended for helping to recover $2000 for an American victim of love scam, Margaret Sanders, just as the agency announce the recovery of $23,886 for another victim.

Sanders who lives in Sherman, Texas, made the commendation after she was presented with a cheque for the sum by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI.

She expressed delight at the professionalism demonstrated by the Nigerian agency in helping to recover the money which she thought she had lost to the scammer.

The FBI agent who made the presentation lauded the cooperation with the EFCC, while explaining that the FBI only facilitated the repatriation of the money after it was recovered by the EFCC.

Sanders met a suspected Nigerian fraudster, Benjamin Akugbe, online and fell in love with him. The scammer who claimed to be Benny Brown from Warri, Delta State, promised her marriage, and requested for the sum of $2000.00USD to enable him join her in United States of America.

The money was wired to him through Western Union, into an account with the name, Gladys Ikpoba domiciled with a new generation bank.

After an endless wait for the fiancé, Sanders came to the sad realisation that she had been duped. But her efforts to recover the money were unsuccessful until she petitioned the EFCC.

The latest recovery of $23,886 by the Commission was made in similar circumstances, for Jolanta Kasza, an American based in New York. She was fleeced of $64,000 by a suspected Nigerian Fraudster, Ndekwu Jindu (aka Dr. Daniel Coffman ) in a romance scam.

Kasza allegedly met Coffman online in June 2012, and the fraudster introduced himself as self employed Caucasian pharmacist.

Impressed by the profile, Kasza “fell in love” with both agreeing to get married.

According to her, in the course of the affair, the suspect at different times requested for money under various guise. Before she realised that she was dealing with a con artist, she had lost $64,000 USD to the fraudster.

She consequently petitioned the EFCC, which through discreet investigation recovered $23,886 USD. The agency is in the process of repatriating the fund to the victim.

The trio are part of a syndicate arrested over allegations of conspiracy, internet scam and stealing from one of the new generation banks to the tune of N806, 208,000.00 (Eight Hundred and Six Million Two Hundred and Eight Thousand Naira). Forty others are still at large.

The theft was perpetrated through a system glitch linked to the fraudsters, in which the bank suffered a huge loss of more than N806, 208,000.

The petitioner, who works in one of the new generation banks, alleged that a review of transactions involving the bank with Interswitch Nigeria limited revealed that the bank was not reimbursed for the transactions consummated on ATM terminals.

He observed that while many of the transactions involved were failed transactions, the amounts involved were not reversed, and all the customers were seen to have withdrawn the cash amounting to the sum, on each day of the occasion it happened.

The EFCC has so far confiscated the following property, which are proceeds of the crime from the suspects who are all within the South-South zone: one uncompleted 59-room self contain hostel, a twin bungalow in Oghara, Delta State, one uncompleted hotel project, one bungalow with a swimming pool in Ughelli, a bungalow in Agbaro , one Toyota Venza 2010 model, two Toyota Solara cars 2010 model, two Toyota Camry cars, 2010 model and two Honda Accord cars, 2005 model.

The suspects would be arraigned in court as soon as investigations are completed.

Meanwhile, another suspected internet fraudster, Emeofa Michael Ikechukwu has been arrested by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission(EFCC) for allegedly obtaining $100,000 from a Dane, Hengameh Misepasi in a romance scam.

Ikechukwu who also go by the alias, Michael Briggs , was picked up in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, by the Commission’s operatives following a petition from the Nigerian Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden.

The suspect allegedly met the victim online in February 2013 and falsely represented himself as an American business executive on business visit to Nigeria.

In the course of the internet affair, Ikechukwu promised his victim marriage and later began to make monetary demands on her, using various excuses.

Once, he told her that he had problems with government officials and requested for a loan.

He later cajoled her into partnering with him on a phantom timber business.

The last request he made before he was arrested was a demand for $10,000 to enable him travel to Denmark to meet her.

It was while he was attempting to draw the $100 sent by the victim(instead of the $10,000 requested) through Western Union that he was arrested.

The suspect would be arraigned in court as soon as investigation is completed, EFCC’s Head, Media & Publicity, Wilson Uwujaren said.

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/love-scam-american-victim-lauds-efcc-%e2%80%a2agency-recovers-23886-for-victim-efcc-arrests-another-fraudsters-for-n806m-scam/feed/2alanprinceNigerian National Pleads Guilty to Fraud Charges in International Conspiracy Casehttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/nigerian-national-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-charges-in-international-conspiracy-case/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/nigerian-national-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-charges-in-international-conspiracy-case/#respondThu, 19 Feb 2015 11:05:42 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=742Gulfport, Miss – Teslim Olarewaju Kiriji, 30, a Nigerian national and one of eighteen defendants indicted in a nine-count federal indictment filed in the Southern District of Mississippi, entered a guilty plea today before U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden to conspiracy to commit laundering of monetary instruments, announced U.S. Attorney Gregory K. Davis.

Kiriji faces a maximum penalty of twenty years in federal prison and a $500,000 fine or twice the value of the property involved. Kiriji admitted to being part of an international organization involved in multiple on-line fraud schemes which included the use of victims’ personal identification, banking and credit information.
The indictment alleges that a West African transnational organized criminal enterprise was involved in numerous complex financial fraud schemes over the internet. This mass marketing fraud included romance scams, reshipping scams, fraudulent check scams, and workat-
home scams along with bank, financial and credit card account take-overs.

The investigation was initiated in October, 2011, by Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”) agents in Gulfport after U.S. law enforcement officers were contacted by a female victim in Mississippi who was the victim of a sweetheart scam. The victim received a package in the mail requesting that she reship the merchandise to an address in Pretoria, South Africa. The investigation later revealed that the merchandise was purchased using stolen personal identity information and fraudulent credit card information of persons in the United States. Investigators have identified thousands of victims of this scam in the United States, resulting in the loss of millions of U.S. dollars.

The indictment in this case is the result of an investigation led by the HSI Gulfport office in partnership with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, South African Police Service, Toronto Police, HSI Cyber Crimes Center, Treasury Executive Office of Asset Forfeiture, HSI Ontario, HSI Charleston, Interpol South Africa, HSI Pretoria and HSI Atlanta.
The case in Mississippi is prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Annette Williams and Scott Gilbert along with Robert Tully of the Organized Crime Gang Section of the Department of Justice.http://www.wjtv.com/story/28046983/nigerian-national-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-charges-in-international-conspiracy-case

]]>https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/efcc-nabs-alleged-romance-scammer-over-100000-deal/feed/0alanprinceRomance scammers take $11 million off West Australianshttps://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/romance-scammers-take-11-million-off-west-australians/
https://alanprince.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/romance-scammers-take-11-million-off-west-australians/#respondMon, 19 Jan 2015 12:43:29 +0000http://alanprince.wordpress.com/?p=734WHEN Janet was contacted by an engineer on a dating website last year, she thought she had found a nice, good-looking man who was fascinating to talk to on the phone. But during the next five months, the 70-year-old lost a five-figure sum before realising scammers were pretending to be her Australian beau working in Kuala Lumpur.

After romancing Janet, “Richard McCarthy” told her he had problems with his engineering contract, had lost his credit card and needed a loan.

“He needed money for parts and asked for it to be put into his Malaysian business account, but always promised he would pay it back and even put that in writing,” Janet said.

“I began to get suspicious when we could never meet in person despite him travelling through Perth.

“I went to the airport to meet him once and he wasn’t there.”

A friend did an internet image search of his photos and revealed the scam to Janet.

“I felt betrayed and emotionally abused, and I still struggle to get my head around how somebody could be so wicked,” she said.

“Financially, it’s been a disaster, but the betrayal of trust is worse.”

The scammers used stolen photos of NSW actor and musician Clive Hodson.

The EFCC spokesman, Wilson Uwujaren, said the suspects met the 49-year-old nurse on Facebook and were able to trick her into parting with €61,500, about N13.5m.

Uwujaren said, “The victim allegedly met one of the accused persons sometime in January, 2014. He introduced himself as Collins Page, a Croatian engineer resident in Wigan, England.

“Within days of their meeting, Page contacted her with the story that he was in Nigeria to supervise a construction project in Edo State and that he was having difficulty with his credit card as it had been blocked for security reasons.

“He solicited Janina’s assistance for cash. Goryczka sent him money until she had transferred a total of €61,500 through one Emmanuel Okoh, based in Cape Town, South Africa, Junior Best and Cyril Ojiemen.”

It was gathered that when Page kept pressurising the victim for more money, she confided in a friend who told her that she might have fallen into the hands of scammers.

The victim subsequently contacted the police in her country, who in turn contacted the EFCC after preliminary investigation.

The duo of Xavi, aka Page and Aikhaituamen were arrested by the EFCC and arraigned before Justice E.F. Ikponmwen of the Edo State High Court, Benin, on charges bordering on conspiracy and obtaining money under false pretences.

While Xavi was slammed with 12 counts, Aikhaituamen was dragged to the court on six counts.

Two charges read in part, “That you, Gabriel Xavi (a.k.a. Collins Page), Aikhaituamen Junior, Ojiemen Cyril (still at large) and Emmanuel Okoh (still at large), sometime between January and February 2014, at Benin, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, with intent to defraud, conspired to obtain money by false pretences from Janina Goryczka, offences contrary to and punishable by Section 1(3) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Related Offences Act, 2006.

“That you, Gabriel Xavi (a.k.a. Collins Page) and Emmanuel Okoh (still at large) on or about the 31st day of January, 2014, at Benin, within the jurisdiction of this honourable court, with intent to defraud, obtained the sum of €40,000 from Janina Goryczka on the false representation that you were a Croatian engineer handling a road construction project in Edo State, Nigeria, and the money was for purchase of equipment and materials towards the project, which representation you knew to be false.”

The duo, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges after they were read to them.

The prosecuting counsel, G. K. Latono, prayed the court to remand them in prison custody.

Counsel to the first accused person, P. E. Onobun, and counsel to the second accused, C. N. Dike, prayed the court for a short adjournment to enable them file applications for bail.

Justice Ikponmwen adjourned the case till December 8, 2014 for consideration of bail applications. He ordered that the defendants be remanded in prison custody.

LAPORTE | A visit to a dating website resulted in a LaPorte County man and his wife being scammed out of about $100,000.

LaPorte County police on Monday said documentation provided by the woman showed more than $20,000 of the funds were wired by her 40-year-old husband to Nigeria.

Many such scams originate out of Nigeria, but local law enforcement may be able to do little unless they receive help from outside authorities, said LaPorte County Police Chief of Detectives Pat Cicero.

“We’re going to try and help him out as much as we can but there are some jurisdictional issues,” said Cicero.

The Kingsbury-area woman reported Sunday night her husband about a year ago started having contact with a woman on a dating website.

The woman at some point asked him for money so he could secure an inheritance and she would pay him back once he collected.

The scam was discovered two weeks ago by his wife when she noticed suspicious charges on her credit card and learned about her husband’s activity on the dating website, police said.

Her husband had also given the woman from the dating website, who went by the name “Miss Sanders,” his driver’s license number along with personal information like his Social Security Number and credit card information.

Several lines of credit were also opened for him to secure cash advances to forward to the woman, who claimed to be from Mississippi, police said.

Police said the victim’s wife was gathering other documentation to show where the remainder of the funds were transferred.

So far, police said investigators learned three men in Nigeria picked up the money that was wired and have possible names of the suspects.

Cicero said the same scam is being pulled nationwide but he did not know the extent law enforcement in Nigeria might be willing to cooperate with police agencies in this country to try and stop it.

A San Antonio man, who was busted for his roll in a wire fraud plot that stretched from Arizona to Nigeria, looked less like the so-called Prince in those email scams and more like a homeless bum with stains on his sweatpants.

Gerald Wiley, 42, has been charged with Theft.

Investigators say he is what is commonly called the Money Mule. Someone broke into the victim’s email account… and used it to make a wire transfer to Wiley’s bank account.

“Mr. Wiley then took a cut of that money and sent the rest to Nigeria,” Officer Doug Greene tells News Radio 1200 WOAI.

The victim in this case was in Arizona, but investigators believe there are more people across the country who fell victim to the scam. As many as ten people are believed to be part of the scam.

“We want the public to be aware of these situations,” Officer Greene said. “If they see something too good to be true, promising a certain amount of money, it’s too good to be true.”

Wiley is also being investigated by the FBI’s cyber crime task force and could face federal charges.